Cortada will discuss his "No Tengan Miedo" assemblages at the "Treasures of South Florida" Honors Course at FIU's Biscayne Bay Campus.
Through "No Tengan Miedo" Cortada explored the impact of Pope John Paul II’s historic visit to Cuba on the third anniversary of his 1998 trip.

Revolución is a seditious piece for both Miami and Cuba. A miniplunger with four wheels attached translates as a caustic ideogram, suggesting the popular expression revolver la mierda (to splatter the shit), which Cortada believes has been Cuba's reality for as long as one can remember, before and after Castro.

-- Alfredo Triff (New Times, 2001)

NO TENGAN MIEDO

Xavier Cortada will discuss his 2001"No Tengan Miedo" assemblages at the "Treasures of South Florida" Honors College course at FIU's Biscayne Bay Campus. The course is taught by Mary Lou Pfiefer.

Through the 2001 "No Tengan Miedo" exhibit Cortada explores the impact of Pope John Paul II’s historic visit to Cuba on the third anniversary of his trip. The exhibit contained paintings created immediately after the artist’s first travel to the island--an 8-hour charter trip to hear the Pope’s Mass, and those created thereafter. These works include some 2000-2001 conceptual pieces—the first ever exhibited by Cortada.

Cortada explored the Pope’s impact at the societal and personal level—having traveled to the Vatican in February 2000 to meet the Pope and participate in the Jubilee for Artists, and then having returned to Cuba for the second time two months later to meet family and attend a packed Sunday Mass in the family hometown of Nuevitas, Camaguey.